The Mandate
The international mandate for the Janus Project is derived from a report by the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) called "Some reflections on the United Nations" (UN Doc.No: A/40/998).
The JIU report found that "Approaches to the search for peace and security through institutions, and through sectoral, centralized or direct (military) means, while laudable, had failed and were often counter productive to the long term objectives of the Charter of the United Nations."
The JIU report recommended that "the existing order of priority between the direct and indirect approaches to the search for peace should be inverted representing a considerable intellectual transformation."
In the same year, the then UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, began has annual address to the UN General Assembly by saying: "The period we have entered is Janus-faced. It wears both the aspect of hope and the countenance of dangerous unrestraint."
The JIU's report and the Secretary-General's opening statements in 1986, still resonate today - almost a quarter of a century later.
The Janus Project is crafted to affect the transformation recommended in the JIU report. It is also designed to steer our common destinies in the more cooperative direction hoped for by the Secretary-General.